Ndume Says Army Can’t Overcome Boko Haram In Nigeria

Four years after saying insurgency would soon be history in Nigeria, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Army, Senator Ali Ndume, has said the renewed insurgency being experienced in the Northeast geopolitical zone of the country will continue.

Following the renewed commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight insurgency in 2015, Ndume had expressed confidence that insurgency would become a thing of the past.

In a new development, the former Senate Majority Leader said unless the critical challenges confronting the country’s armed forces are urgently addressed, the insurgency will persist.

Ndume maintained that the poor funding of the Nigerian Armed Forces, and the inadequate troops that were deployed to fight insurgents, were not good enough for the country.

“The challenge that the military have now is lack of resources and inadequate personnel. As long as the resources are not deployed in terms of what they would need, we would continue to have this (insurgency) challenge.

“In an operation like this, we have only 30, 000 soldiers on the ground which is grossly inadequate. They (federal government) have to do something urgently about that,” Punch quoted Ndume as saying.

The lawmaker, however, expressed confidence in the ability of the Nigerian Armed Forces to restore normalcy to the north-east region of the country as soon as possible.